The impact of visual elements of package on consumers purchase intent and the mediating role of perceived risk An analysis on food packaged products

The impact of visual elements of package on consumers purchase intent and the mediating role of perceived risk
An analysis on food packaged products.

Dissertation by
Maria Inês Fernandes Paz Antunes dos Santos
Student Number: 152116222
Dissertation written under the supervision of
Prof. Paulo Romeiro
Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the MSc in Management with Specialization in Strategy and Entrepreneurship at CATÓLICA-LISBON School of Business & Economics
June 2018AbstractTitleThe impact of visual elements of package on consumers purchase intent and the mediating role of perceived risk – An analysis on food packaged products.
AuthorMaria Inês Fernandes Paz Antunes dos Santos
Nowadays, packaging has been acknowledged to be an important strategic marketing tool, especially at the purchasing moment, and can be considered as one of the most relevant factors influencing consumers’ buying behaviour of packaged food products. The visual design of packaging transmits symbolic meaning to consumers, hereby impacting how the product is evaluated by them.
The purpose of this study is to understand the effect of visual elements of packaging; specifically, the effect of incorporating an image of the product or a transparent window on the packaging of the product on purchase intent, giving a special attention to the role of perceived risk.
This dissertation is particularly important regarding low involvement FMCG products, such as packaged salmon and packaged pizza, where packaging is strongly linked with the product in the eyes of the consumer at the point of purchase.
The methodology used for this investigation includes both primary and secondary data analysis; quantitative data was collected through an online survey.

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Results obtained with this study suggest that food packaged products purchase intent is explained by the presence of transparency and product imagery on package as well as by the risk (financial, psychological and functional) associated with the each food category. In addition, according to the dimension of perceived risk, it plays a key role in mediating some of these relationships.

AcknowledgementsI would firstly like to express my gratitude to my mother, who have constantly supported me through my academic journey and provided me with the best opportunities and the finest education in order to achieve my professional and personal goals. Her optimism and boundless encouragement were truly important and decisive to complete this Dissertation, the final stage of my Master’s degree.
I would like to show my appreciation to my supervisor, Professor Paulo Romeiro, for all his patience, insightful advice, and valuable feedback throughout the entire process.
Also, very important for me is to express my sincere appreciation to my friend and talented designer, Matilde Pinheiro de Melo for helping me with the design of the packages presented on my survey.
I am also very grateful to Ana Rita Azevedo, my manager at Colgate-Palmolive, and my co-workers, who have demonstrated enormous support and constant availability for sharing their valuable knowledge with me.

Last but not least, I am very grateful to my amazing friends, who support me unconditionally.

According to ADDIN CSL_CITATION { “citationItems” : { “id” : “ITEM-1”, “itemData” : { “DOI” : “10.1016/j.jcps.2010.08.003”, “ISBN” : “10577408”, “ISSN” : “10577408”, “abstract” : “We present a summary of the state of the aesthetics literature in consumer psychology, introduce the articles that constitute this Aesthetics Special Issue, and raise a number of research questions that are viable areas for future investigation in the domain of aesthetics. The Special Issue of the Journal of Consumer Psychology on Aesthetics was conceived. The articles include a variety of topics within aesthetics including multisensory aesthetic experiences, conceptual processing of aesthetics, aesthetic design preferences, and individual differences in evaluating aesthetics. The research methods employed include observations and interviews as well as lab and quasi experiments. Next, we introduce the articles that comprise the Special Issue on Aesthetics. We encourage you to pursue the study of aesthetics in consumer psychology and to see the Journal of Consumer Psychology as an outlet both welcoming and receptive to new and exciting developments in aesthetics. We sincerely hope that the readers of this Aesthetics Special Issue will continue to generate important, interesting, and innovative research in the domain of aesthetics in consumer psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)”, “author” : { “dropping-particle” : “”, “family” : “Patrick”, “given” : “Vanessa M.”, “non-dropping-particle” : “”, “parse-names” : false, “suffix” : “” }, { “dropping-particle” : “”, “family” : “Peracchio”, “given” : “Laura A.”, “non-dropping-particle” : “”, “parse-names” : false, “suffix” : “” } , “container-title” : “Journal of Consumer Psychology”, “id” : “ITEM-1”, “issue” : “4”, “issued” : { “date-parts” : “2010” }, “page” : “393-397”, “title” : “”Curating” the JCP special issue on aesthetics in consumer psychology: An introduction to the aesthetics issue”, “type” : “article-journal”, “volume” : “20” }, “uris” : “http://www.mendeley.com/documents/?uuid=96580f57-4df3-4332-b317-b068c63cfc8d” } , “mendeley” : { “formattedCitation” : “(Patrick & Peracchio, 2010)”, “plainTextFormattedCitation” : “(Patrick & Peracchio, 2010)”, “previouslyFormattedCitation” : “(Patrick & Peracchio, 2010)” }, “properties” : { “noteIndex” : 10 }, “schema” : “https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json” }(Patrick ; Peracchio, 2010) despite the increasing awareness of the importance of product packaging, theories to understand how consumers react to the appearance of a product or package are relatively recent. In order to maximize the effectiveness of packaging at the point of purchase, studies about packaging and all its possible elements and their impact on consumer’s product perceptions and consequently purchase decision should be a crucial and relevant issue.

1.2 Problem StatementThe aim of this paper is to examine the impact of visual elements of package on consumer purchase intentions, with particular emphasis on the following variables: the effect of incorporating visual product imagery (product pictures) and transparent elements on the package, and how these elements affect consumers’ perceptions about the product, consequently impacting consumers’ purchase intent.
This study will focus on packaged food goods, comparing two categories with distinct levels of perceived risk: packaged pizza and packaged salmon.
In order to have a clearer understanding of the problem statement addressed on this dissertation, its specification could be the following: Is what you see what you get?1.2.1 Research QuestionsThis dissertation provides a theoretical framework to address these packaging doubts and it studies some contingencies under which package design are more or less effective: the presence of an image of the product or the presence of a transparent window on package with exposure of the contained product.
Here below are presented the research questions that have been formulated in order to gain a better understanding of the issue and accomplish the purpose of the research:
RQ1: How do visual elements of package influence consumers’ purchase intention?
RQ2: Does the inclusion of a picture of the product on the package contribute to lower purchase intentions than the inclusion of a transparent element on the package?
RQ3: How visual elements of package influences the uncertainty perceived by the consumers at the point of purchase?
RQ4: Does perceived purchase risk impact purchase intent?
RQ4: Does perceived risk mediate the relationship between visual elements of package and purchase intent?
1.3 Academic and Managerial Relevance of ResearchThe topic of this dissertation came up while I was grocery shopping at the supermarket. As per common knowledge, it is recognized that consumers may not think very deeply about brands before they walk into the store to buy a product. Moreover, at the point of purchase consumers are exposed to many similar products on the shelf. Thus, package is a key factor in marketing communications, especially at the point of purchase. Findings suggest that 73% of purchase decisions are made at the point of sale and manufacturers are aware of this. In addition, 90% of these purchase decisions are made based on the aesthetics package design elements ADDIN CSL_CITATION { “citationItems” : { “id” : “ITEM-1”, “itemData” : { “author” : { “dropping-particle” : “”, “family” : “Keizer”, “given” : “J”, “non-dropping-particle” : “”, “parse-names” : false, “suffix” : “” } , “id” : “ITEM-1”, “issued” : { “date-parts” : “2016” }, “title” : “Faculty of Behavioral Management and Social Sciences The visual influence of transparent product packages”, “type” : “article-journal” }, “uris” : “http://www.mendeley.com/documents/?uuid=cbaca5b0-77ce-4128-8766-4cb1b6a06b51” } , “mendeley” : { “formattedCitation” : “(Keizer, 2016)”, “plainTextFormattedCitation” : “(Keizer, 2016)”, “previouslyFormattedCitation” : “(Keizer, 2016)” }, “properties” : { “noteIndex” : 11 }, “schema” : “https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json” }(Keizer, 2016).

In academic terms, the topic of this study constitutes a further investigation of what has been studied in literature and can be considered academically relevant in the deepening of the knowledge of the relationship between the variables relative to visual elements of package, perceived risk and purchase intent. Despite the fact that this topic has been widely studied in previous research projects, the study adds focuses further and expands the research on the effectiveness of product imagery versus transparent window on package in consumer’s purchase intent. The findings highlight the importance of including a mediator variable, the perceived risk and how it mediates these relationships across different food product categories.
Regarding managerial relevance, one of the key challenges for packaging marketers and designers is to create sustainable, well acceptable packaging. Thus, companies can benefit from the results and conclusions that dissertation aims to achieve as they can be used towards a company better use of its marketing resources by develop appropriate and attractive packaging solutions that are able to perform in traditional channels and thus increase the number of sales of packaged food products.
1.4 Research methods
In order to answer the research questions in an appropriate way, both primary and secondary data were used in this master thesis. Secondary data have been collected through a detailed research on previous studies, books, academic journals and articles in order to gather an in-depth background knowledge about packaging, with a special focus on: the evolution of packaging, the visual elements of packaging, consumer drivers of packaged goods’ purchase intent and how perceived risk mediates the relationship between visual elements of package and consumers buying behaviour.
Regarding primary data, an online survey was done and distributed online to quantitatively assess and understand the causal relationships between the variables in study.

The survey was analysed using multiple linear regressions, mediation analysis, frequencies analysis and reliability analysis. The main statistical analysis performed were Mediation models, in order to study the effect of the different types perceived risk considered in this study as a mediator of the relationship between visual elements of package and purchase intent.
All the questionnaire’s responses were analysed using IBM’s SPSS statistical software version 25.0. The data will be treated quantitatively applying frequencies analysis, measures of central tendency (arithmetic mean and median), measures of dispersion or variability (minimum and maximum values, mean and standard deviation), the coefficient of Cronbach’s Alpha and statistical tests (ANOVA test and Sobel test) and linear multiple regressions.
1.5 Dissertation outline
This dissertation will present a total of five chapters. The following chapter contains the literature review. It provides with an in-depth understanding of the hypothesis that this dissertation proposes to answer and is supported by previous studies. It will explain how each relevant variable have an impact on consumers’ purchase intent for packaged goods.

The third chapter comprises the research methodology which will clarify and described the methods used to collect and analyse the data and how each statistical test will be applied to this data.
The fourth chapter, Results Analysis, presents an analysis of the results obtained from the collected data and verify the legitimacy of each hypothesis proposed on this study.

The final chapter contemplates the conclusions of the study, as well as its limitations and some recommendations for future researches in this area of study.